China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, said it aims to cut carbon emissions per unit of GDP by 60 to 65 percent at the end of 2030 from the 2005 levels.
Advertisement
China vowed to step up its program to cut fossil-fuel pollution, spelling out its broadest commitments yet, boosting a United Nations effort to reach a landmark deal on climate change in December.
“China’s carbon dioxide emission will peak by around 2030 and China will work hard to achieve the target at an even earlier date”, Li’s office said in a statement as he lunched with President Francois Hollande.
“China’s climate commitment sets it on a clear path to transition away from heavily polluting coal to cleaner and sustainable energy sources like wind and solar”, said Suh at the NRDC. It shows emissions still rising slowly (by around 1 percent a year) between 2020 and 2030 even if China cuts its carbon intensity by 65 percent by 2030.
India’s chief negotiator Ravi Prasad emphasized the need for developed countries to share emissions-cutting and clean-energy technology with poor nations to bring them onboard the global effort to address climate change.
PARIS: China wants to team up with the West to modernise its own economy, but also to help smaller developing countries in Asia and Africa, Prime Minister Li Keqiang said in Paris on Wednesday (Jul 1).
Environmentalists argue that these new commitments will build on China’s current promises to reduce the carbon-intensity of their economy at least 40 percent by 2020 and create a cap-and-trade system by 2017.
As well, Brazil agreed to restore 12 million hectares, or more than 46,000 square miles, of its rainforests in the same time frame, thereby increasing plant photosynthesis and pulling more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Jennifer Morgan, the global climate director at the World Resources Institute, called the pledge “serious and credible”.
People familiar with the issue in both China and the European Union say Monday could be the day Beijing chooses, although it is unclear if the announcement will be in Brussels. Already, 40 countries have released their national commitments, showing the growing momentum behind worldwide climate action this year.
Having predicted three years ago China’s carbon emissions would peak by 2025, his team’s model, updated last August, now suggests that will occur considerably earlier.
South Africa’s Environment Minister Edna Molewa stressed that “the four countries sitting around this table have been, on our own, doing a lot of work” on climate change. China’s Prime Minister Li Keqiang made a long-awaited pledge to curb carbon emissions during a trip to France on Tuesday in which a Chinese company also inked an US$18 billion (RM67 billion) deal with Airbus.
Andorra pledged a 37 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from a business-as-usual scenario by 2030. Leading climate change scientist Lord Nicholas Stern and London School of Economics colleague Fergus Green says this could mean China’s emissions peaking in 2025.
Advertisement
“Just as we’ve been encouraging on the mitigation side retrofit of loft insulation and so on, we need to think how to develop passive cooling measures maybe tinted glass, shading, again as is common in other countries”, said Lord Krebs. China’s coal consumption has dropped off dramatically.
